Mendocino County Today: Saturday, Jan. 13, 2024

Rain | Flood Watch | Navarro Mouth | Vacation Rentals | Paint Night | John Feliz | Iron Men | Foul Crowd | Westport Beach | CSF Students | Evil Eye | Hedgehog Update | Ultra Mod | Ed Notes | Lake Mendocino | Moving Vets | Plaqueinator | Highway Signs | Camp Hiring | Cline Fundraiser | Byron Haverfield | Yesterday's Catch | Fugs Memory | Mining Erudite | Marco Radio | Jim Crab | Not Person | Be Careful | Camel Man | NFL Paywall | The Internet | Contagion Rot | Autoworker 1954 | Deficit Plan | Unfriends | Willing Accomplices | Tough Love | Pullman Crew | Beribboned Warriors | Abe Fan | Male Mistakes | Election Season | Punctuation | Poison Spiders | Cajka | Palestinian Justice | Lost Contact | Outlaw Nation | Post Oscar

MODERATE TO HEAVY RAINFALL as well as strong gusty winds will occur across Northwest California today. Flooding impacts can be expected with this system. Snow impacts will be restricted to far northeastern Trinity. Calmer weather is expected Sunday through early next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): On the coast this Saturday morning I have a rainy 50F with .50" of rainfall collected. LOTS of rain today then clearing for Sunday & Monday. Off & on rains continue next week.

RUSSIAN RIVER COULD FLOOD SATURDAY amid heavy rains

by Megan Fan Munce

The Russian River could rise up to 15 feet Saturday afternoon as a strong storm hits Northern California, potentially flooding Mendocino County roads, according to the National Weather Service.

The storm is expected to arrive Friday night and worsen on Saturday, with parts of Mendocino and Humboldt counties expected to experience 3-5 inches of rain.

Near Hopland, the rain could push the Russian River’s water level up to 18 feet — 3 feet above its flooding threshold, and 15 feet above where the river measured on Friday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service.

At that level, Highway 222 near Ukiah could flood, along with local roads in low-lying areas of Hopland, Ukiah and Talmage. Highway 175 could also experience “significant flooding” at the approaches to the Russian River bridge, according to the California Nevada River Forecast Center.

The weather service has issued a flood watch for southeastern Mendocino County lasting from Saturday afternoon to late Sunday morning. The Russian River is expected to reach flooding levels around 3 p.m. Saturday.

This weekend’s water level could be the second highest in the past five years, topped only by February 2019 when the Russian River reached just under 23 feet at Hopland, according to the river forecast center.

The center is also monitoring rising water levels on the Sacramento River near Tisdale Weir in Sutter County and Rio Vista in Solano County. Neither area was expected to flood as of Friday afternoon.

Smaller creeks and streams could also pose flooding risks across northwest California, including Humboldt and Mendocino counties, the weather service warns.

The impacts of Saturday’s storm are expected to concentrate on the North Bay, with no flooding forecasted further south.

(sfchronicle.com)

FORT BRAGG CITY COUNCIL REJECTS PROPOSAL to Expand Short-Term Vacation Rentals Amidst Concerns Over Housing Crisis

by Sarah Reith

The Fort Bragg City Council declined a proposal to expand the zones for allowable short-term vacation rentals at its Monday night meeting, and directed staff to clarify some definitions. 

In 2017, the council adopted regulations for short-term vacation rentals, which only allows them in the central business district, on the second or third floor above commercial uses. But the definition of short-term rentals is vague. It doesn’t specify the number of days, and the difference between a short-term rental and a bed and breakfast is not clear.

Seven known unpermitted short-term vacation rentals are currently operating in different areas of the city. The only two permitted short-term vacation rentals generated over $25k in transient occupancy tax for the city last year.

But the majority of comments from the public and the council showed a deep concern over the lack of long-term residential rentals, and alarm that increasing the number of short-term rentals would further deplete workforce housing stock.…

mendofever.com/2024/01/13/fort-bragg-city-council-rejects-proposal-to-expand-short-term-vacation-rentals-amidst-concerns-over-housing-crisis/

JOHN FELIZ

Chairman John ‘Bubba’ Feliz, Jr. of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians passed away on January 8, 2024. He was 45 years old. 

John is preceded in death by his loving mother Catherine Cortez, Paternal Grandparents Getrude & Necho Feliz and Maternal Grandparents Leo & Rose Dulay. He is survived by his loving Father John Feliz, Sr., sister Jennifer Feliz, nephews & nieces, Jacob De Los Santos (Renee Beck), Jasmine Mora, Alec Mora, Jasper Ford, Jada Ford, great-nephews, Daniel Munoz, Lucca De Los Santos, Julian Beck and the newest addition, a great niece. Along with many cousins and extended relatives. 

John was born and raised in Redwood Valley, Ca. and lived on the Coyote Valley Reservation where he dedicated his life of service to the Tribe and his community. He was a caring & passionate leader starting his many years of tenure at the age of 12. He became the President of the Pacific Region for the United National Indian Tribal Youth in high school and went on to fill many rolls and capacities within his Tribe and surrounding community. 

In 2004 he was elected Tribal Chairman for the Coyote Valley Tribal Council at the age of 25, becoming one of the youngest Tribal Chairmans in the Nation. He served this role for two consecutive terms with honor and integrity. As the Tribe's leader he played a vital role in stabilizing the Tribal Government during a transitional time. He secured the Tribal Rolls and amendments to the Tribal Constitution. He successfully renegotiated the State Gaming Compact to be favorable to the Tribe and the Tribe's members. Along with many other honorable accolades too long to list. 

John was then elected to fill the role as the Tribal Chief in 2017 in which he served two consecutive terms. He served many years on the Executive Board for the Consolidated Tribal Health Project, Inc. as well as a delegate to many other organizations throughout the years on the National Congress of American Indians, National Indian Gaming Association, & the Native American Finance Officers Association. Most recently he was then again elected as the Tribal Chairman, he was sworn in on December 14, 2023. 

He was a proponent of maintaining Tribal Sovereignty and cherished his heritage and Pomo cultural. He was a proud Pomo singer and Rock Man as a child well into an adult and traveled far and wide with his cousins to showcase the Pomo culture to the outside world. 

He dedicated his life to his family whom he loved dearly. He was always willing to lend a hand and a smile to anyone in need. He enjoyed tutoring at Mendocino College. A long-time fan of Big Brother, lover of his Diet Pepsi, many DIY projects, staying up to date on current events throughout the world and showing off his Christmas tree d‚cor every year. He enjoyed continuous learning, receiving his degrees in Accounting and Business Management maintaining a 4.0 GPA and was a student until the very end. 

Our relative, our beloved Bubba, so full of life, charm, kindness, and humor, maintained a positive outlook on life under any circumstance. He was a proud son, brother, uncle, great-uncle, cousin, and friend. With a busy and fulfilled life. Our families & community will miss him greatly. But his legacy will live forever. The impact of his leadership will continue. 

Family & friends are invited to a Viewing, Dancing & Singing, Open Mic & Potluck on Sunday January 14, 2024 at 5:00 pm to be held at the Coyote Valley Gymnasium. Followed with a Service and Dinner on Monday January 15, 2024 at 12:00 pm. Flowers may be sent to: John Feliz, Sr. & Jennifer Feliz C/O Coyote Valley Gymnasium 415 Coyote Valley Blvd., Redwood Valley, CA, 95470 Services are under the direction of Eversole Mortuary. There will not be graveside services.

STONE COLD IN POTTER VALLEY

Editor,

It's a bumpy ride into Potter Valley. Luckily the ride out Wednesday night was smooth.

We rolled into the gym around 5:30 for my daughter's jr high basketball game. Nice gym, I thought. Very spacious. But it was cold.

The game was going well for us (Mendocino). We had some ups and downs, but at half time we were up by ten, so, no problem. Then came a hard foul by two Potter Valley girls as one of our girls drove the lane for a lay up. It looked pretty ugly, but our player got up and shook it off and headed to the line. 

I noticed that the Potter Vally crowd was laughing as she walked to the line. It irked me that they blew it off so quickly. Then, as she went to shoot, one of the parents (not kids) yelled, “Sweep the leg!” Watch The Karate Kid movie if you don't know the reference. I'm not sure if any of our players heard the statement. They may not even get it if they did. 

But I got it.

Nonetheless, our girls must have picked up on my anger since they ran away with it after that point. I think we ended up beating them by 16. Game over.

I gathered up my crew of girls and jumped in the car, heater on full blast. The road was smoother on the way out and I chuckled as I sped past the “Save Lake Pillsbury” signs.

Kirk Vodopals

Navarro

AV CSF DESIGNEES

Congratulations to our students earning the California Scholarship Federation designation for fall semester. We are delighted. This number is up to 41 from last Spring’s total of 23. It is a testament to their hard work. So proud of them!

Aliya Anguiano; Emily Barajas-Gomez; Zoe Anisa Bennett; Evelyn Escobar-Gutierrez; Vanessa Sandoval; Jennifer Solano-Hernandez; Emily Soto-Perez; Brianna Talavera-Fernandez; Alexis Valencia Lua; Adolfo Vazquez-Ramirez; Eric Velasco Velasco; Aster Arbanovella; Violet Rye Baird-Green; Zoey Lee Crisman; Cristian DeJesus-Gonzalez; Monica Delgado; Samantha Espinoza; Samantha Flores-Bailon; Ciomary Garcia-Parra; Wyatt Stone Gatlin; Guy Kephart III; Ananda Rose Mayne; Alan Mendoza; Ethan Mendoza-Mendoza; Emilia Victoria Bennett; Soleil Adamari Cornejo; Fatima Cruz; Keily Espinoza; Cinthia Garcia-Parra; Natalie Lopez-Mendoza; Natalie Marcum-Soto; Julian Ochoa-Rocha; Chantel Kira Alarcon; Marissa Alvarez-Perez; Tricia Anguiano-Rubio; Leilani Bucio; Leslie Bucio; Kellie Crisman; Lucy Maribel Espinoza; Mariana Flores-Almanza; Evelyn Franco.

Louise Simson, Superintendent

Anderson Valley Unified School District

MARY O'BRIEN COMMENTS ON BOONVILLE BUMMER HOUSE: When I went into Boont Berry Farm a couple days ago, there was a young, skinny guy in the yard futzing around with stakes. Behind him was a flock of chickens in the far corner. The guy stopped what he was doing long enough to give me the evil eye. Some kinda crazy illegal set-up that doesn’t square with the neighborhood!

HEDGEHOG BOOKS UPDATE

Hello Hedgehog supporters. 

I wanted to give you a short update about the status of Hedgehog Books. It was a tough year, 2023, and I'm glad it's over and hoping for a better 2024 for us all!

The physical bookshop is closed, which was a difficult but necessary change, given my current mobility and healing issues. I'm hopeful that someday I can re-open, but the jury is still out on that. In the meantime, Hedgehog Books lives on and is evolving in some as-yet-to-be-determined ways.

I am still fulfilling book orders, new or used. I have moved back into the shop space, which looks bare without all the shelves and books. That, too, is a work in progress, but moving back there makes it easier for folks to come by to pick up their orders. I prefer that orders are made via email, but if you need to come in to guide a search, please contact me for an appointment. My hours are still wonky with medical and physical therapy appointments, and with outside jobs.

My passion continues to be getting books into the hands of budding readers, of all ages. I am grateful that I was able to donate over a thousand books to schools in Oakland which are trying to build their libraries. Almost a thousand more went to the Friends of the Santa Rosa Library to help support their efforts. I am committed to getting great, affordable books into the hands of individuals, as well as teachers, schools, non-profits… Let me know what you need, and I will try to make it happen.

Thank you, again, for your support over the five years of the Hedgehog Book shop. I admit to having a hedgehog-sized hole in my heart, but I'm hoping to fill some of it by buying books for you! So stay in touch and let me know what you need or want.

All the best to you.

ED NOTES

YEARS AGO, when an accumulation of vague complaints seemed to have reached critical mass, an irate patient demanded that I “expose” the Anderson Valley Health Center for various of its alleged blunders. “You don’t say anything, Bruce, because your wife is on the board of directors.” 

I DIDN'T want to die in my sleep by my wife’s hand, but arousing her formidable wrath wasn't a consideration in that particular instance because she wasn't on the board any longer. When she was on the board she wouldn't even let me look at the meeting notes, but since I seldom had gotten complaints about the clinic I’ve always assumed it worked pretty well, especially considering the pure numbers of hypochondriacs and professional whiners among the general pop. And the people complaining invariably refused “to go public.” It was in that instance and many others unrelated to modern medicine that the aggrieved simply wanted me to barge into print without the aggrieved stepping up. “I'll hold your coat while you fight these people.”

INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM, local branch. Not a thing wrong with the AV Health Center these days, and never was anything wrong with services rendered at Boonville's mini-hospital, in my direct experience. The beefs I've had have been with its board of directors over the loss of a young doctor and a Stalinist-like removal of a long time employee, which seems to be a Mendo-specific practice. County administrators, especially under CEO Mommy Dearest, would report for work unaware they were about to become jobless when suddenly a cop was at their desk demanding their keys, and then perp-walking the victim clear out into the parking lot. A number of these unwarranted terminations are still being adjudicated at huge public expense which will inevitably become huger when the wrongfully terminated wins a big settlement. (Eyster vs. Cubbison will cost local taxpayers lots and lots, and already has in court time and lawyers.)

THE USUAL request to look into a matter comes from the more aggrieved partner to a severed romance. In these requests, the aggrieved typically accuses the other person of felonious conduct, often crimes against the children they had together. I always turn these “stories” down flat because they are so obviously vindictive I'm not going to waste my time, or inflict he said-she said stories on my already sorely put upon readers.

THE PROBLEM any small paper has with complicated, time-consuming stories is finding the time to do them right. Perhaps an even larger complication is a fact of modern life: The professional classes seldom talk for attribution because to talk is to risk ostracism. Or worse. Dependent children and a mortgage don't make warriors out of breadwinners. 

STORIES about dangerous doctors are difficult because their peers, in my experience, would rather tolerate a physician-killer than be on the outs with their colleagues. A famously incompetent medical man operating on the Mendo Coast was all set one night to amputate a kid's leg when a nurse pointed out that not only was the medico about to saw off the wrong leg, the high school football player had only suffered an ordinary fracture. Another Coast healer was basically operating a pill factory for old stoners left over from the Summer of Love. Not a peep out of colleagues, although Dr. Wrong Leg finally lost his hospital privileges in Fort Bragg only to move over the hill and go to work in Ukiah. 

LAWYERS and the court system? Judges are professionally silent and beyond all accountability. Unless they’re raping court reporters in open session, forget about trying to get any of them to talk even if you have videos of the rapes and 500 witnesses. 

THE LOCAL COURTS covered for two Robes for years who should have been removed from the bench, and a third was so g.d. dumb his credentials should have warranted a close re-visit. A small minority of county lawyers will speak up if they see candor as in their interests. The lawyers I find most annoying are the ones whose clients would actually benefit from pre-trial publicity, but again peer pressure keeps them silent.

COPS? Depending on who happens to be Sheriff, they either are fairly candid or they dummy up altogether. I’m not the only person in the journalo-biz who periodically has trouble getting basic information on public matters. DA Eyster, to cite an egregiously silent public servant, isn't speaking to me or any other local media people, but if the LA Times calls him up, he'd pronto slip into a clean shirt and make sure the photographer got his right side. If the NYT called, Eyster would rent a tux. Under the three most recent top cops — Craver, Allman and Kendall — ask a question, get an answer, even if it's not the one you were looking for. 

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I listened to Jacob Brown talk to the board on-line about the relocation of the Veterans Service Office. Everything he said was so right on. I was in tears. The whole thing is disgusting. A detail I missed at first: the veterans originally went out and got this building ON THEIR OWN for the exact need of a non-clinical government building!! And now the county is taking it!! My father is a veteran and damn near flips his lid at every clinical appointment. It’s the rushed atmosphere, the lights, the masks and halls and chaos and parking lot and phones and them asking if he’s got his health portal set up. He can’t even use a cell phone. I’ve seen him jump out of his skin at the ring of a phone. He doesn’t trust government buildings. Why would he? Our local veterans are now on a line fighting for the realization that health is connected to ambiance. Afterall, isn’t it the ambiance of war that causes PTSD? These veterans are fighting a fight for all of us right now, which is the absolute NEED to connect emotional and physical health. They are fighting for the dawning of a realization that the two aren’t separate. They are fighting for all of us who feel like our doctors don’t see the bigger picture of our bodies. They are fighting for the mastectomy patients who just get sent home willy-nilly in out outpatient procedures with no emotional support, for the foster care kids who distrust authority and find doctor’s offices scary, for migraine sufferers that can’t handle florescent lights and buzzing hvacs, for our elders who don’t want to heal in a room of machines beeping with the sound of your fellow patients screaming. For the caretakers and CNAs who’s own sanity and health depend on the calm provided by places like the Veteran’s Building on Observatory. Our local veterans are fighting right now for the right of ALL of us to demand that our health-saving spaces are actually healthy and not based soley on the efficiency of the bottom line… This is the fight of our time.

* * *

TODD SCHAPMIRE: Veterans must be cared for and listened too. They are to be valued. Not cast aside by this BOS. Years ago, Shari and I created Guitars for the Troops when she was Ukiah Rotary President. This allowed me to meet many of our Veterans. We gave many of them guitars as a form musical therapy for PTSD. I was able to travel to the VA in Long Beach, CA and deliver guitars and sound equipment. I was invited to watch a practice session Rock For Vets, a forty-person band of Veterans and active military rehabbing at the hospital. Men and women who served our great Country jamming rock n roll classics. You could see the smiles on their face and the rare occasion to forget the PTSD or the wheelchair they were sitting in. It was emotional and rewarding.

Thanks to Jacob Brown for his letter that reminded me of these awesome memories. And keep up the fight for these amazing people, they must be heard and taken care of.

* * *

“Supervisor John] Haschak said the county lost its lease on the building where Air Quality Management is currently housed, so Air Quality will be moving into the building on Observatory Avenue [where the Veterans Service Office was] as soon as possible. He says there will be quarterly meetings with the department heads, the leaders of veterans organizations, and him and Supervisor Glenn McGourty, so that vets aren’t abandoned to ‘an institutional morass’.”

— Sara Reith, KZYX reporter

HIGHWAY 101: ARE WE IN MENDOCINO COUNTY YET? 

Highway signs keep getting stolen, Caltrans reports

by Justine Frederiksen

For drivers heading north on Highway 101, there are currently no signs indicating that they have entered Mendocino County.

The first such sign that drivers would typically see to welcome them into the county is at the north end of Sonoma County, just south of the Geysers Road exit off Hwy. 101. 

However, that sign was recently stolen. Again. 

“Unfortunately, the sign panels are stolen often,” Caltrans spokesman Manny Machado said. “The last time we installed a panel (at that location), it was gone within several weeks.” 

And that is not the only Mendocino County line sign currently missing. Machado said of the six state highways entering Mendocino County, three panel signs are gone: “Mendocino/Sonoma U.S. 101, Mendocino/Lake Route 175 and Mendocino/Lake Route 20.” Two of the three remaining are on the Mendocino Coast, and the sixth is located at the Humboldt County line on Hwy. 101. 

“Most of these panels are installed on steel posts with steel rivets for attaching the panel to posts, and post to base, to make it as difficult as possible to remove, however the vandals are using steel cutting tools to take the panels,” Machado explained. 

When asked the process and cost for replacing them, Machado said they are “special-order panels and take a while to receive. Once the panels arrive, they will be re-installed at each location. 

“The cost to replace the panel sign along with steel posts and steel bases on U.S. 101 at Mendocino/Sonoma is approximately $840.” 

When asked if Caltrans is considering ordering extra signs to have them on-hand due to the frequency in which the signs get stolen, he said that for now, only “the three sign panels have been ordered. We hope with the steel poles, it will serve more as a deterrent for removal.” 

Another sign welcoming northbound Hwy. 101 drivers into Mendocino County is also currently gone, but for different reasons — the large Visit Mendocino sign featuring the motto “wine, waves and wilderness” just north of Geysers Road. 

“The wood sign that was up on (Hwy.) 101 fell over last July,” said Jaime Peters-Connolly with Visit Mendocino, explaining that at the time, her organization was already in the process of preparing to collect bids “for new gateway signs on all entrances to the county, which would include our new branding.” 

The slogan for Visit Mendocino is now “Magic is Real,” which Peters-Connolly said her organization believes “encapsulates our natural beauty, the vibe, the people, the offerings (lodging, food and beverage, arts, music, etc.) and the experiences one can have here in the county. We’ve also replaced orange (our previous primary color) with a deep green.” 

As to when a new sign might go up, she said that a request for proposals went out in November, and last week they were “about to review the proposals we received. On a side note, the RFPs only went to Mendocino County businesses.”

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

CAMP NAVARRO IS HIRING a General Operations Manager for the upcoming season. You can learn more about this exciting position and apply at this link: https://theapplicantmanager.com/jobs?pos=nc129 

MEMO OF THE WEEK 

Dear [Voter], 

Before we head into the weekend, I wanted to let you know that we are on last call for tickets to our Wild West Fundraiser at Barra of Mendocino Winery and Event Center! 

I am so grateful and excited that we have sold over 100 tickets and only have a few tables and spots left.

The fundraiser will be next weekend on Saturday, January 20th, and feature live music, a silent auction and more. Tickets are $125 per person, $200 per couple, or $750 for a table of 8. Each ticket includes dinner and two drink tickets, with additional drink tickets available for purchase.

All the proceeds from the event will support my campaign for Supervisor and help me reach voters with solutions to the key issues facing our county. With just a few weeks before voters start casting ballots, this fundraiser is the last opportunity to help us reach our fundraising goals and be able to communicate with voters!

See you soon!

Sincerely,

Madeline Cline, Candidate 

Redwood Valley

ED NOTE: $125 is a lot to ask. But I have to admit: this gal is organized. 

R.D. BEACON:

I was digging around trying to find out what happened to my old friend, he passed away in 2022, in his 90s, little-known facts from the deep and Arcadians of elk, he gave the elk fire department their first ambulance, which was an older Pontiac, that was the first ambulance service in Fort Bragg,CA, I remember the day that Byron came down to give it to the town, it was in the 60s, unfortunately the city fathers this would be Walter J Matson, and a few others had the flu and were unable, to attend the event, at the oasis, local bar and elk, as the fire chief at that time, I was delegated to accept the keys, for the ambulance, on behalf of the fire department, and the community, Mr. Haverfield , was always very community minded and would help anybody and everybody to advance the community, he worked tirelessly in the Fort Bragg Mendocino area to improve, the human condition is former business, is still operating even though, has changed hands been so many times, but it is the only funeral facility on the coast, at one time, there were actually three, funeral homes on the coastal area one in point arena, and 2 in Fort Bragg, timber industry changed the reduction, of Saul Mills, and people, now there's only one surviving facility here on the coast, which is Chapel by the sea, I would run into Byron, down at Little River inn, in the bar with a bunch of his friends that it got a little, golfing which was his favorite sport next to, going to a dance party with his wife and avid, dancer, but like so many people that are passed away and we remember them from the great things they did, in the community.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, January 12, 2024

MATTHEW FAUST, Ukaih. Domestic abuse, disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

CODY MENDEZ, Ukiah. Petty theft, controlled substance, paraphernalia.

BRENDA POINDEXTER, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, controlled substance.

ERNEST SALO, Fort Bragg. Controlled substance for sale, failure to appear, probation revocation.

RONDY SMITH, Willits. Protective order violation.

MALISSA WARNER, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

THE FUGS

Deb Silva: Your image of the Fugs poster in Friday’s MCT reminded me of a post I made last summer at mansonblog.com. I usually don't do six degrees of separation woo-woo stuff but this time I couldn't help myself. I found a 1968 Fugs poster with a number of coincidental things that relate to Manson and his Family: mansonblog.com/2023/08/fugs-avalon-ballroom-poster.html

MEMO OF THE AIR: Live on KNYO from Franklin St. all night Friday night!

Marco here. Deadline to email your writing for Friday night's MOTA show is 5:30. Or, if that's too soon, send it whenever it's done and I'll read it on the radio next week.

I'm in town for this show. I'll be in the cluttered but well-lighted back room of KNYO's 325 N. Franklin studio. If you want to come in and show off, that's fine if you're in perfect health. Just waltz in and say hi. To call and read your work in your own voice on the air, the number is 707-962-3022. (I've been away from the Franklin Street studio for a few weeks. Some equipment has been replaced, and I'll be seeing the new system immediately before starting my show. If you call and I can't figure out how to work that part of it, that's okay. If I can, then fine. It's always something, and there's always another week to get it right, though then it's something else, and something after that, until Singularity, the Rapture of the Nerds (say nyerds, as in poignards), so.

Oh, also, lately I've been switching up the things that happen at the beginning of the show because of just the first hour being carried by KAKX too, now, thanks to KAKX manager Marshall Brown. This pushes later the announcements and swap shop time, and then poetry, and poem-like objects, and more stories, and the international situation, which is desperate, as usual.

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg as well as anywhere else via KNYO.org. Also the schedule is there for KNYO's many other terrific shows.

As always, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find many things to mess with and learn about until showtime, or any time, such as:

Earthquakes and tsunamis 1901-2020. https://theawesomer.com/visualizing-every-earthquake-over-time/726859/

Click on the vertical strip to make it big enough to read. It's a pretty good, true story. If it's expired, and it might be by now, give up gracefully and move on. https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-a815864cb3fa10c03cd4100a7410447a

Speaking of expired, here's an article about the fem bias of spookdom. With art. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ghost-women-why-are-there-so-many-female-ghosts

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

ASSEMBLYMAN JIM WOOD INTRODUCES BILL DESIGNATING HIMSELF AS OFFICIAL STATE CRUSTACEAN

Assemblymember Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg) introduced AB 1797 to recognize the Dungeness crab – Metacarcinus magister – as California’s official crustacean, coinciding with its Opening Day, January 5. Senator Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) is the principal coauthor and Assembly Members Dawn Addis (D-Morro Bay) and Gail Pellerin (D-Santa Cruz) are coauthors.

“The Dungeness crab is an iconic crustacean in California and one that has made a significant contribution to the economies of coastal communities in California and to those in the commercial fishing industry,” said Wood.

The industry supports fishing ports and bolsters retail and hospitality businesses, bringing patrons in to restaurants and inns. It is a key delicacy that is often at high demand when Californians ring in the New Year.

“We must recognize, however that the Dungeness crab industry is not without its challenges,” said Wood. “We need to ensure that the fishing industry, the ocean and its inhabitants are all protected.”

Both commercial and recreational fisheries for Dungeness crab exist in California, having slightly different seasons within the two distinct management areas, divided north and south by the Sonoma/Mendocino line.

“Maine has its lobster. Louisiana has its crawfish. Here in the Golden State, we love our Dungeness crab,” said McGuire. “Dungeness crab is one the oldest commercial fisheries in California and the fleet continues to be a driving economic force for coastal communities. I’m grateful to Assemblymember Wood for giving the Dungeness crab a crack at becoming the official crustacean of the Golden State. It’s a well-deserved recognition.”

“Let’s recognize the importance of the Dungeness crab to our state, to the commercial fishing industry and the communities that depend on its health and abundance,” said Wood.

IN A NUTSHELL…

Solving the Problem… The best summation of the entire situation on planet earth was uttered by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, who said simply: “I am not a person!” That understood, the whole problem of being identified with a body and a mind becomes resolved. One is free. That is all that there is to it.

Craig Louis Stehr

BE CAREFUL who you drink with for the next few days. They might hire some treacherous freak to flatter you at the hotel bar and then stab you full of enough sedatives so they can drag you to some born-again tattoo parlor in an airstream on the outskirts of town and carve the sign of the Manson family on your forehead and weird Jap swastikas all over your back and then put you on a private plane to Dallas, stark naked and utterly crazy on truth serum for a god-awful photo-op and rabid confession in the blazing sun on the tarmac, just in time for the evening news and tomorrow’s papers… 

— Hunter Thompson (to James Carville, former Clinton Advisor)

PAYWALLED PLAYOFF GAME IS NFL’S LATEST SUCKER’S PLOY

by Phil Mushnick

Well, sports fans, because good things come to those who wait, Saturday is your lucky day!

According to Mike Tirico and NBC, as heard every two minutes within last Sunday night’s Bills-Dolphins and spoken on behalf of Roger “It’s All About Our Fans” Goodell and his enabling team owners, the NFL has provided you a chance to be part of history:

All one must do is purchase Saturday night’s Dolphins-Chiefs, the first NFL playoff game to be sold and seen exclusively behind a paywall, as per the demand of no one other than those reliant on further feeding their bottom lines or servicing their buy-in costs.

That’s right, you lucky dogs, as Tirico was delighted to endlessly repeat (on orders), unless one lives in Miami or Kansas City, one, if able, must purchase the game on NBC’s Vulture, er Peacock Channel.

Apparently this is the wave of the future despite no evidence that adding pay TV sports by removing them from greatest-good view, will drive both the bright future and increased revenue of sports.

But there is hard evidence that this is based on a wish, as the failures of take-’em-for-granted-greed go unlearned and indeed copied. (See: how pay-per-view killed boxing and made-only-for-TV-money has severely eroded the popularity of MLB).

I suspect that if Saturday night’s game were in Berlin, Ronald Reagan would tomorrow declare, “Mr. Goodell, tear down this paywall!”

All week I heard from readers who would otherwise watch Saturday’s game but instead will live without it as a matter of principle, financial and moral, and for their unwillingness to further fuel their status as suckers — much as they had rejected the opportunity to be double walloped for Goodell’s “good investment” PSLs.

But the NFL under Goodell is so smug that it can’t see or stem the rot from within. Consider Sunday’s fabricated “exciting” end of this, the first more-revenue-driven 17-game season, one that gave mediocre-and-less teams undeserved postseason chances.

Sunday, the 8-8 Bucs in a must-win against the 2-14 Panthers could only manage a 9-0 win. The Titans, at 5-11, beat the must-win 9-7 Jaguars. The must-win 8-8 Seahawks trailed the 4-12 Cardinals until late in the game.

What once was explained and even extolled as “parity” have become conspicuous cases of very bad football played at critical times by unprepared taxi-squad assignees as well as reasonably fit bodies who can be summoned from their existing jobs to replace injured second- and third-stringers.

History? This has already been a season of historically bad football assigned to earnest but inept quarterbacking. But because it’s all a transparent, insulting con — all of it — Tirico, throughout Sunday night’s telecast, couldn’t have been happier or more excited for all of us!

Peacock/NBC paid $110 million for this betrayal. Funny, as NBC last week issued a press release bragging about its monster regular-season viewership totals. But who knows what money now costs? Last week Adam Silver fined the Nets just $100,000 for essentially playing not to win against the Bucks.

Can’t or won’t watch Saturday night’s NFL playoff game? Yep, Roger, “It’s all about our fans.”

WHY DID I REFER TO ROT?

Dear Editor,

You probably recalled the movie ‘North by Northwest’ where Roger Thornhill was mistaken as an American Spy. His business card was ROT. initial(s). So to create a contagion it has to be (mis)interpreted as something else. 

Have a great day.

Sincerely yours 

Gregory ‘Vigilant’ Crawford

Fort Bragg

PS. This morning I sent a lengthy letter to Psychotherapy Magazine on the origins of contagion rot, which I shall shorten here. Ironically shorten can cover it perfectly. In the Old Republic days shortening was used for cooking, now days it’s a substitute. In communication the exchange is I talk / you listen, you talk / I listen. The new contagion is we (sluff) rot and not ever allude to it, but of course not to our dear AVA friends. This new regime of rot communication is because a certain (got your back) had a secret incentive and now we’re in rot central. However this new regime wants both rot and righteous rot to be punitive, corruptive, standardized commonalities. In that the past is rot angry as hell, the righteous rot is angry as hell, and the present is (selfish) rot contagion 52 pick-up. I hope yours is rot free zone.

NEWSOM OUTLINES PLAN TO COVER STATE BUDGET DEFICIT

by Mikhail Zinshteyn and Sameea Kamal

California is in a budget hole, its depth measured not in feet, but in dollars.

How deep? A projected $38 billion deficit, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said Wednesday he will declare a fiscal emergency if necessary and unveiled his initial plan to dig the state out of a fiscal chasm for the second year in a row. 

But Newsom painted it as a return to a more normal budget, after recent spikes in revenue. He called it “a story of correction, a story of normalization after a period of tremendous amount of distortion.” 

His deficit projection is far less dire than last month’s outlook from the nonpartisan legislative analysts, who projected that the state is eyeing a $68 billion deficit for the 2024-25 fiscal year, which starts July 1. 

Crucially, Newsom’s team is assuming $15 billion more in revenues than the legislative analysts, explaining much of the difference in forecasts, based on the resilience of the economy. 

“We’re just a little less pessimistic,” said Newsom, who repeatedly criticized the news media’s reporting on the Legislative Analyst’s Office’s figure. 

Newsom’s plan to close the deficit includes: 

Withdrawing $13.1 billion from the budget stabilization and safety net reserve accounts; 

Cutting $8.5 billion from existing programs and services, including climate, housing and education; 

Delaying $5.1 billion worth of spending, including on transit; 

And deferring another $2.1 billion to 2025-26, including about $500 million in additional funding for University of California and California State University; 

$5.7 billion in internal borrowing from special funds to support the tax on health care providers. 

But he said he wants to protect investments in addressing homelessness, mental health reform, and public safety. 

All told, Newsom is proposing a total state budget of $291.5 billion — about $19 billion less than what he and lawmakers approved last June for 2023-24. But January plans are often revised considerably. Last year, Newsom proposed spending $297 billion; the final total in June was upped to $310 billion. 

About 70% of California’s total state spending would go toward public schools, colleges and health and social services — a trend that’s held steady since the 1970s, according to a CalMatters review of state budget data. 

Unlike the federal government, most state governments, including California, must approve balanced budgets — running a deficit isn’t an option. And California isn’t alone facing a shortfall — about half of Americans live in states now grappling with budget gaps, ongoing deficits, or both, according to an analysis by The Pew Charitable Trusts. 

But many of the proposals outlined today will undoubtedly change in the months ahead. Following the usual process, lawmakers will hold dozens of hearings to evaluate the governor’s ideas and recommend their own before their June 15 deadline to pass a budget. The Legislative Analyst’s Office will produce independent revenue projections and policy suggestions as more data pours in. The state’s read on the budget starting July 1 will gain greater certainty in May when the governor will release updated revenue projections based on the personal income taxes Californians will have paid by April — and present revised spending proposals. 

And while the deficit projected by the governor’s office is about 20% higher than what California faced last year ($32 billion, after two years of record surpluses credited to a healthy stock market and federal funds), experts say we’re not at crisis level just yet: The state is in a better position now to deal with the downturn compared to past deficits during the Great Recession after it put billions in reserves. Even after Newsom’s plan to pull from the state’s reserves, he says the state would have $18.4 billion remaining. 

Revenue misfire 

In recent years, about 60% of the state’s general fund, the core source of government spending, was paid for by personal income taxes. And the top 1%, whose incomes swing wildly according to the vagaries of the stock market, have historically paid close to half of all income tax revenue for the state. 

A main cause of the deficit is a $11.8 billion drop in revenues compared to what the governor and lawmakers expected when they finalized the current budget last June. The misfire is the result of both state and federal tax collectors giving nearly all Californians more time to file their income taxes due to last winter’s deadly storms. 

That decision meant lawmakers and the governor lacked the usual data when they solidified the budget last year. As a result, they committed money they didn’t have to spending programs underway now. 

Newsom had already signaled that California’s government needed more belt-tightening: On Dec. 12, his finance department directed state agencies to freeze spending, including new services contracts, IT equipment and vehicles. And last fall, he repeatedly cited the budget crunch in vetoing bills that he said would have added $19 billion in unaccounted costs. 

The state budget is actually a multi-year math problem — with very real human consequences — that projects revenues for the year ahead and factors in surpluses or deficits in the current year and year before. 

One way to find savings is to delay, or outright cut, so-called one-time spending programs. These are typically trial runs of new social programs, construction projects, or experimental programs that last a few years. 

Last year’s budget projected that the 2024-25 fiscal year would include $12 billion in one-time spending; the Legislative Analyst’s Office said the figure is closer to $9 billion. The analyst’s office said those one-time projects, including $2.2 billion in transportation and $1.8 billion in education, could be on the chopping block. 

Building the proposed budget is largely a closed-door exercise until the governor publishes his plan in January. Scott Graves, a budget expert with the California Budget & Policy Center, said that the governor’s office starts developing the January budget around May or June of the previous year. 

“So advocates who want to influence what’s going to appear in the governor’s proposed budget will use whatever contacts they have within the administration to make their case for particular expenditures or policy changes that they would like to see included in the governor’s proposal in January,” Graves said in an interview. 

That doesn’t mean the governor’s team will listen, but once a budget idea appears in the January draft, it has a strong chance of becoming law six months later when the Legislature and the governor finalize the state’s new spending plan. 

If the first six months of the budget process is largely out of public view, the period between now and June is the public’s chance to weigh in,especially as the Legislature begins its numerous budget and subcommittee hearings starting in February. 

In anticipation of today’s budget release, some groups started their asks early: The League of California Cities — one of the highest spenders on lobbying the Legislature — asked the governor in a letter last week for a $3 billion funding stream to increase affordable housing and reduce homelessness. For three years in a row, Newsom has granted $1 billion for local homelessness programs.

(CalMatters.org)

THE DUMMKOPF MOVEMENT

Editor: 

Trump’s accomplices — Give credit where credit is due. Donald Trump discovered and tapped into the deep underbelly of American life. It’s a place where hatred, grievance, deceit and paranoia are considered virtues. It is not surprising that people like Trump exist. History is littered with them. What is surprising is that millions of Americans have yet again become such willing accomplices to his cause.

David Bonta

Santa Rosa

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

This country needs some tough love right now! Most people are comfortable with their lifestyle and could care less about world affairs and government shortcomings.

Although we don’t need any more tragedy, maybe a few hits in this Country by a terrorist organization is the tough love we need to get everyone off their cell phones and back on getting this Country on track.

Maybe a few days without Facebook and all the other worthless social media will get somebody’s attention.

When the lights go out don’t complain. At this point we don’t have the luxury of being a victim. We can’t complain, we caused this mess!

From yesterday…

AUSTIN AWOL?

To the Editor:

For four days, Defense Secretary Llyod Austin was AWOL. Four friggin' days! North Korea could have launched a nuke. Or Russia could have nuked Ukraine. Or Israel could have attacked Iran. Or China could have attacked Taiwan.

Any other member of the military would have been charged with desertion. Or dereliction of duty. But not the guy at the top. Not Defense Secretary Austin.

Why not?

Identity Politics. In other words, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). 

Valuing diversity, equity and inclusion without regard to the immutable characteristics of merit is wrong. It's unethical. And it should be illegal. DEI seeks to increase the representation of some groups through discrimination against members of other groups. And discrimination is illegal. 

Besides, the actual efficacy of many DEI interventions is lower than many practitioners make it out to be, and, in fact, it can be disastrous.

What's next?

The Pentagon inspector general announced in a statement it will review "the roles, processes, and actions" related to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's hospitalization, which was kept hidden even from the White House for four days.

The review will examine whether the Defense Department's policies and procedures for notifying when the defense secretary has transferred authorities are appropriate and timely. 

In the past week, Austin and senior leaders at the Pentagon have faced criticism for not disclosing his hospitalization for four days — even to the deputy secretary of defense who took over Austin's duties — including the period of time Austin was anesthetized and unconscious in surgery and semi-conscious while in post-op in the intensive care unit. 

I said it once and I'll say it again: If your boss doesn't notice you were missing for four days during wartime, you might be a Diversity Hire. 

John Sakowicz 

Ukiah 

---

ED REPLY:

It's unfair, and worse, to tag Austin as an affirmative action hire simply because he's black. He seems smarter and is certainly more articulate than the other beribboned warriors the Pentagon trots out to urge war recommendations to the general public. As it happens I've just read an excellent account of the Cuban Missile Crisis by the Brit historian, Max Hastings, coming away with even more admiration for JFK than I had, with reservations and criticisms, of course. (Nobody gets a pass from me. Hear that? Nobody!) JFK backed down Kruschev while all Kennedy's generals, which included that straight-up lunatic, Curtis LeMay, pumped for an aerial attack and follow-up U.S. invasion of Cuba. Castro was for war, too, which would have been nuclear from the outset as our air force took out the nukes Russia had placed in Cuba. Without going into the details, the human species would have been over in '62 if Kennedy had listened to his generals, the point being, as generals go, Austin is just one more general, his race having nothing to do with his position. LeMay, btw, was famous for saying stuff like, “There are no innocent civilians, so it doesn't bother me so much to be killing innocent bystanders.” Is it too much of a generalization to say they're all versions of LeMay?

BILL KIMBERLIN: 

This is one of my favorite photos of Marylin Monroe. She was a big fan of Abraham Lincoln. It was taken by her friend/photographer Milton Green just outside her home in her Cadillac convertible. 

One of the stories I heard recently about her was that she was walking down 5th Avenue in New York with a friend and the friend said to her, "Marylin, no one is noticing you." And she said, "Do you want me to do, "her"? 

Marylin, then proceeded to "do her". Now, the crowds woke up. The friend said, "How she did that, I don't know."

IN SPECIES AFTER SPECIES, females are coy and males are not. Indeed, males are so dim in their sexual discernment they may pursue things other than females. Among some kinds of frogs, mistaken homosexual courtship is so common that a “release call” is used by males who find themselves in the clutches of another male, to notify them that they are both wasting their time. Male snakes, for their part, have been known to spend a while with dead females before moving on to a live prospect. And male turkeys will avidly court a stuffed replica of a female turkey. In fact, a replica of a female turkey's head suspended fifteen inches from the ground will generally do the trick. The tom circles the head, does his ritual displays, and then (confident, presumably, that its performance has been impressive) rises into the air and comes down in the proximity of the female's backside, which turns out not to exist.

— Robert Wright, 1994; from ‘The Moral Animal’

WE’RE ENTERING AN UNPRECEDENTED ELECTION SEASON in which the fates of several candidates, including some independents to be profiled here, will be decided by legal battles instead of voters. This puts a premium on covering court proceedings accurately, because courts, unfortunately, are likely to be this year’s campaign trail. 

— Matt Taibbi

POISON SPIDERS AT THE CENTER OF THE WEB

by James Kunstler

“The same people accusing Trump voters of subverting democracy are the ones who cheated in every election since the 1960s, lied to get us into half a dozen stupid wars, created Covid in a lab, and then covered that up. You are free to tell them to STFU” — Peachy Keenan

You know why the judge let provocateur Ray Epps off the hook for his antics before and during the so-called J-6 “insurrection,” don’t you? Well, yes, it was partly because he was acting at the direction of blob officials, most likely the FBI, but possibly the CIA, Defense Intelligence, or some black-box fed outfit no one ever heard of (but somehow gets half a billion in funding every year). Ol’ Ray pleaded to one year’s probation (no jail time), 100 hours of community service (checking books out at his local library?), and a $500 fine. Say, what. . . ? A speeding ticket on the Rockville Pike would probably cost you more.

You remember those videos of Ray on the DC street the day before the riot, importuning the crowd, a commanding presence with his military bearing and red hat, six inches taller than most of the other men around him, yelling, “Tomorrow we need to go into the Capitol, into the Capitol!” At which moment the crowd groaned “no-o-o-o…!” and then commenced chanting, “fed…fed…fed…!” They had his number. His use of the word need was especially beguiling, as in, who actually “needed” that to happen?

I’ll tell you one reason Ray didn’t get, like, twenty years, nor two years of pre-trial detention in the reeking, roach-infested DC lockup, or massive fines, like other J-6 defendants: Because he told his handlers in no uncertain terms that he would blow their cover and vivisect them publicly on the whole fed J-6 operation if they so much as made him show up in person for any proceeding — and, of course, he “attended” his sentencing by phone, in a Zoom meeting from a remote location.

Okay, I’ll tell you the actual reason that Ray Epps got the VIP powder puff treatment: It was to give half of America a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. . . the old double-barreled middle finger. . . a thunderous fuck you, with the subtext: we can do anything we want to you and you can’t do anything about it. . . and we can rub your faces in it, too, ho ho. . . and then empty a bed pan over your head in case you’re not feeling sufficiently impotent and humiliated. And the purpose of all that is their hope to foment some act of genuine violent resistance against the blob to justify further lawless persecution of the blob’s enemies. They’re really hoping to set off a civil war to justify martial law in order to ensure a free and fair election.

The judge in the Ray Epps case is…wait for it…the fabulous judicial utility infielder, James Boasberg, now Chief Judge of the DC Federal District Court, a big cheese. Yes, the same rascal who sat on the FISA Court during the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” shenanigans, when they fed all manner of fake documents to that court to enable the FBI to conduct warrantless surveillance on Donald Trump’s campaign, and then afterwards on his presidency.

It was Judge Boasberg who let FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith off the hook with probation when he was charged with doctoring an email to conceal the fact that FBI target Carter Page had been an active CIA informer in Russia over the years, not just some schlub swanning around the fringe of the Trump Campaign. Getting a FISA warrant on Carter Page was tremendously advantageous to the FBI, because it enabled them to use the “three-hop rule,” meaning they could also surveil anyone else in the Trump retinue who Mr. Page had communicated with by phone or email.

The disposition of Ray Epps’s case also means there will be no further official inquiries into his behavior that fateful day 1/6/21. The principle of double jeopardy means he can’t be tried for the same thing twice. There will be no further inquiries into what he did that day and on J-6 itself when he appeared at the barricades on the Capitol grounds, apparently goading protesters to bust through them. It’s a dead letter. Chalk up a “W” for the blob.

But now, chalk up an “L” for the blob: Fani Willis., the Fulton County (GA) District Attorney, has been caught funneling more than half a million dollars to her love bunny, attorney Nathan Wade, after appointing him “special counsel” in the gigantic RICO case against Donald Trump and eighteen other defendants. Poor optics, as they say, and maybe a good deal more than that — such as prosecutorial misconduct. The fact that the lovestruck pair took Caribbean cruises together with that money may only be a minor part of the story. More will come out when Fani Willis answers the summons she has been served to give a deposition at the request of Joycelyn Wade’s lawyers in the Wades’ ongoing divorce proceeding.

More to the point, both Fani Willis and Nathan Wade (in her service) spent time consulting with lawyers at the White House before they filed charges against Mr. Trump. Mr. Wade was there on May 23 and November 19, 2022, talking to Joe Biden’s White House counsel for sixteen hours. Ms. Willis is shown by White House visitor logs to have been present for five hours a few months later, on February 18, 2023, a week after recommending charges to a Fulton County grand jury. The log states that she spent those five hours with veep Kamala Harris.

I doubt that is who she came to visit. My guess is that Ms. Willis spent those hours being coached by Deputy US Attorney General Lisa Monaco, possibly joined by Mary McCord, a former head of the DOJ’s National Security division during the “Crossfire Hurricane” years, then “outside counsel” to the first House impeachment committee, then counsel to the House J-6 committee. It was Ms. McCord, in Trump Impeachment # 1, who arranged for then DOJ Inspector General Michael Atkinson to change the whistleblower rules, allowing for hearsay evidence, which gave a green light to NSA mole Eric Ciaramella to report on the infamous Ukraine phone call that he had not personally witnessed (but was fed a story on by Col. Alexander Vindman.) Nice work there. In other words, these two gals, Lisa Monaco and Mary McCord, are the poison spiders in the DOJ web of veteran seditionists.

This week there is also chatter as to whether Special Counsel Jack Smith might ever actually bring an official federal “insurrection” charge against Mr. Trump to facilitate his “branding” so as to get him kicked off the ballot around the country. I doubt that’ll work out for Mr. Smith, too. If such a matter ever went to trial Mr. Trump would enjoy the right to “discovery” of all sorts of evidence that the DOJ and the FBI would never allow to see the light of day. So, Jack’s stuck with his lame cases now on the docket which, believe me, will be going nowhere.

JUSTICE FOR PALESTINIANS

by John Arteaga

Fundamentalism, of all stripes, is the curse of human civilization. Whether it is the extremist Catholic dogma of Opus Dei, the fire and brimstone and the numerous thriving ‘prosperity gospel’ Protestant preachers who enrich themselves on the gullibility of their followers’ avarice, selling the suckers on the profoundly un-Christlike notion that personal wealth is a sign of virtue and an indicator of the deity’s favor. 

Whether it is Islamic fundamentalism such as Wahhabism, promoted worldwide by the fantastically wealthy House of Saud, after it was basically given the enormous oil-rich nation of Saudi Arabia in exchange for playing ball with the Western oil companies and which basically invented this unusually repressive, violently sexist, murderously homophobic Islamic offshoot as a way to distract its populace from the fact that they were all being fleeced outrageously of their abundant natural wealth for a few crumbs. 

Judaism too has its share of loony fundamentalists, rivaling the Islamic extremists in their treatment of women as chattel. Whether it is the starvation brought about by Stalin’s ruthless communist fundamentalism or the many millions around the world killed in service of capitalist extremism practiced by the anti-communist hysterics who have led the nation down a road to military/industrial hell. Eventually it ends up with incalculable levels of death and destruction, most often visited upon the common people on both sides that have no real dog in this fight. 

Another heartless type of fundamentalist belief which has, in recent history, come to have an inordinate power over the lives of all Americans is so called ‘Strict Constructionism’. I first remember hearing about this concept in regard to the late Antonin Scalia, who’s uber-judgemental Catholic/corporate ‘morality’ I remember despising with a passion during his all too many years on the Supreme Court, but who now seems like an intellectual elder statesman compared to the corporate lackeys and billionaire errand boys and girls who have succeeded him under Trump’s misrule. 

Trump stole one appointment from President Obama (with the damnable Mitch McConnell’s connivance) and lucked into two others. All 3 profess this anti-thought ‘belief’. Apparently ‘strict constructionism’ means that unless one can cite chapter and verse in the founding fathers constitution, a reference to anything coming before the court (no matter if the whole field of interest even existed back then), that golly jee, we just can’t even think about it! Basically it’s a pseudo-intellectual excuse to discard the whole notion of considering the actual facts of a case and default to one’s most primitive prejudices without really examining them. 

The problem with politics today, certainly in the United States but apparently in a number of other countries around the world, is that it is being taken over by the most retrograde forces of fundamentalism. The Republican Party has long been aware of the fact that they represent a distinct minority of public opinion; who but the very richest fraction of a percent of the populace wants to vote for ever lower taxes for those who hold such a large share of the country’s wealth, as well as slashing to the bone any and all services that the society might provide for its vast majority!? 

Republicans have been playing a long game ever since the country pulled itself out of the depths of the Great Depression by raising taxes on the very rich. They realized that the only way that they can win is to find ways to cut back the obvious majority through gerrymandering, voter suppression, intimidation, ID laws and other skullduggery. The excellent Greg Palast has built a career as a reporter on revealing the myriad ways that people of color, the poor, students and other likely Democratic voters have been unfairly taken off of the voter rolls, often in numbers that far exceed the margin of victory that Republicans are then able to get in races there. 

The problem is now that so many people have imbibed the right-wing Cool-aid (it’s hard not to when there are so many propaganda ‘think tanks’, endowed chairs, wholly owned radio and tv networks, not to mention major newspapers) promulgating the beliefs of the far right, that a frighteningly large minority buys the canard that government can’t do anything worthwhile, so they are willing to vote against their own interests! 

In the US, as well as Israel, Turkey, Hungary and a number of other countries, so many people are discouraged from voting because of the feeling that their vote won’t matter. As fewer and fewer people vote, especially in the primary campaigns which decide who we will get to choose between in the general election, the highly motivated right wing religious extremists, who have an uncommon gullibility for criminal conmen like Victor Orban, Bibi Netanyahu or Donald Trump; all idiot savants in knowing exactly what lies to tell a given audience, never mind that today’s lies contradict those of the day before. And their followers get to choose who the rest of us can vote for! 

Look what this tragic dynamic has done for Israel; Netanyahu, touting himself as the one person who can keep Israelis safe, instead empowered the most apartheid prone religious extremists to ever greater oppression of the Palestinians under their control, stealing their homes and lands, destroying their businesses and vehicles, while at the same time empowering Hamas as a way to divide the power of the Palestinian Authority. It couldn’t go on, and October 7th or something like it was inevitable. 

In one of JFK’s best speeches about Vietnam, “when you make peaceful change impossible, you make violent change inevitable”. 

The ongoing massacre of the 2.2 million Palestinians now trying to survive in Gaza is hard to get out of one’s mind, especially as a US taxpayer who is forced to fund this genocide. 

The idea that Israel is going to hunt down and kill every last member of Hamas is delusional; every bombed apartment building creates scores of survivors who will be eager new recruits! There is no solution without justice for the Palestinians! 

(John Arteaga lives in Ukiah.)

WITH ATTACK ON YEMEN, THE U.S. IS SHAMELESS: ‘WE MAKE THE RULES, WE BREAK THE RULES’

by Norman Solomon

Have you heard the one about the U.S. government wanting a “rules-based international order”?

It’s grimly laughable, but the nation’s media outlets routinely take such claims seriously and credulously. Overall, the default assumption is that top officials in Washington are reluctant to go to war, and do so only as a last resort.

The framing was typical when the New York Times just printed this sentence at the top of the front page: “The United States and a handful of its allies on Thursday carried out military strikes against more than a dozen targets in Yemen controlled by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia, U.S. officials said, in an expansion of the war in the Middle East that the Biden administration had sought to avoid for three months.”

So, from the outset, the coverage portrayed the U.S.-led attack as a reluctant action -- taken after exploring all peaceful options had failed -- rather than an aggressive act in violation of international law.

On Thursday, President Biden issued a statement that sounded righteous enough, saying “these strikes are in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea.” He did not mention that the Houthi attacks have been in response to Israel’s murderous siege of Gaza. In the words of CNN, they “could be intended to inflict economic pain on Israel’s allies in the hope they will pressure it to cease its bombardment of the enclave.”

In fact, as Common Dreams reported, Houthi forces “began launching missiles and drones toward Israel and attacking shipping traffic in the Red Sea in response to Israel’s Gaza onslaught.” And as Trita Parsi at the Quincy Institute pointed out, “the Houthis have declared that they will stop” attacking ships in the Red Sea “if Israel stops” its mass killing in Gaza.

But that would require genuine diplomacy -- not the kind of solution that appeals to President Biden or Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The duo has been enmeshed for decades, with lofty rhetoric masking the tacit precept that might makes right. (The approach was implicit midway through 2002, when then-Senator Biden chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s hearings that promoted support for the U.S. to invade Iraq; at the time, Blinken was the committee’s chief of staff.)

Now, in charge of the State Department, Blinken is fond of touting the need for a “rules-based international order.” During a 2022 speech in Washington, he proclaimed the necessity “to manage relations between states, to prevent conflict, to uphold the rights of all people.” Two months ago, he declared that G7 nations were united for “a rules-based international order.”

But for more than three months, Blinken has provided a continuous stream of facile rhetoric to support the ongoing methodical killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Days ago, behind a podium at the U.S. Embassy in Israel, he defended that country despite abundant evidence of genocidal warfare, claiming that “the charge of genocide is meritless.”

The Houthis are avowedly in solidarity with Palestinian people, while the U.S. government continues to massively arm the Israeli military that is massacring civilians and systematically destroying Gaza. Blinken is so immersed in Orwellian messaging that -- several weeks into the slaughter -- he tweeted that the United States and its G7 partners “stand united in our condemnation of Russia’s war in Ukraine, in support of Israel’s right to defend itself in accordance with international law, and in maintaining a rules-based international order.”

There’s nothing unusual about extreme doublethink being foisted on the public by the people running U.S. foreign policy. What they perpetrate is a good fit for the description of doublethink in George Orwell’s novel *1984*: “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it…”

After news broke about the attack on Yemen, a number of Democrats and Republicans in the House quickly spoke up against Biden’s end-run around Congress, flagrantly violating the Constitution by going to war on his own say-so. Some of the comments were laudably clear, but perhaps none more so than a statement by candidate Joe Biden on Jan. 6, 2020: “A president should never take this nation to war without the informed consent of the American people.”

Like that disposable platitude, all the Orwellian nonsense coming from the top of the U.S. government about seeking a “rules-based international order” is nothing more than a brazen PR scam.

The vast quantity of official smoke-blowing now underway cannot hide the reality that the United States government is the most powerful and dangerous outlaw nation in the world.

(Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including War Made Easy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in 2023 by The New Press.)